The Zero-Point Field and Inertia

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1. The macroscopic forces that a real zero-point field predicts are measured, not inferred: Lamoreaux’s 1997 measurements of the Casimir force agree with the semiclassical theory based on a real zero-point field to within five percent across the measured range, and the effect can be read either as the standard quantum-electrodynamic subtraction of two infinite mode integrals or as an imbalance in the radiation pressure of momentum-carrying vacuum photons, with the same answer.Section 1, Introduction

2. The same treatment applied to matter gives inertia: scattering of momentum-carrying zero-point photons by quarks and electrons is almost entirely a detailed-balance process, but because of acceleration effects of the class first studied by Davies and Unruh an acceleration-dependent imbalance remains, and it results in a net reaction force.Section 1, Introduction; Section 5

3. A uniformly accelerated observer sees a Planck-like component of the background field with an effective temperature equal to Planck’s reduced constant times the acceleration divided by two pi times the speed of light times Boltzmann’s constant — about 367 kelvin for the acceleration of the classical Bohr electron — and Boyer obtained the same quasi-Planckian spectrum in stochastic electrodynamics for the classical zero-point field.Section 4, equations 13 and 14

4. In the first route, following Einstein and Hopf, the electric component of the field drives a fundamental charge into oscillation and the magnetic component then acts on that oscillation; the resulting Lorentz force is a reaction force proportional to and opposing the acceleration, whose coefficient — the radiation damping constant for zitterbewegung times the reduced Planck constant times the square of the cutoff frequency, divided by two pi times the square of the speed of light — is read as the inertial mass. Newton’s third law is fundamental, and his second law then follows from it together with the laws of electrodynamics.Section 5, equations 15 to 17

5. The second route needs no particle model at all, only the standard Lorentz transformation of the fields: in an accelerated frame the isotropic zero-point radiation pattern acquires asymmetries, so there is a non-zero Poynting vector carrying a net momentum flux through the object, and the object’s scattering opacity to that flux is the back reaction. Inertial mass comes out as the volume of the object times the integral over frequency of a dimensionless scattering efficiency against the spectral energy density of the field, divided by the square of the speed of light, and the result is a properly relativistic equation of motion.Section 6, equations 18 to 20, citing Rueda and Haisch, Physics Letters A 240, 115 (1998)

6. What to watch: the authors name the two questions they are asked most — whether the theory can be tested and what technology would follow — and report that Forward’s USAF-sponsored study identified no directly feasible test but a constellation of related experiments, while NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics programme was then being initiated with the zero-point-field inertia concept high on its list. They also point to the theoretical measurement that would settle the foundations: a quantum field theoretic derivation of the connection, or a demonstration that a modified stochastic electrodynamics reproduces the statistics of the quantum vacuum, as Ibison and Haisch showed for the field amplitudes.Section 7, For the Future

The way in

How to cite it

Bernhard Haisch, Alfonso Rueda (1998) The Zero-Point Field and Inertia doi:10.1007/978-94-017-0990-3_20

Where it sits in the curriculum

• Inertia and gravity from the vacuum